Breaking into Prison

by Mairsile Leabhair

  “We don’t even have time for dirty,” Trudie quipped, pulling her pants down.

  “So let’s get down,” Annie smirked, dancing her way out of her jeans.

  In less than two minutes, both women were nude and in bed together. Annie went straight for Trudie’s breast, cupping the soft tissue with her large hand. She sucked on the tip, tantalizing it into a hard apex of absorbing desire. Trudie’s moans of pleasure urged Annie to explore the lower depths of her body. Running a hand on the inside of Trudie’s thigh, she pushed gently and Trudie opened herself up for her. The rising heat from Trudie’s clitoris set Annie’s hand on fire as she dipped it into the molten juices of Trudie’s hunger.

  “Oh, baby. I want you so bad. Let me taste your love for me,” Annie pleaded.

  “Hurry, please, hurry,” Trudie begged, clenching the sheets with her hand.

  Annie slipped her tongue inside the wet folds of fevered skin and felt the hardened clit ready to explode. “Come for me, baby.”

  Her hot tongue on Trudie’s clitoris was all Trudie needed to burst into orgasm.

  “Oh! Oh Annie!” Trudie screamed, raising her hips until the last burst of ecstasy escaped her body. Breathless, she fell back, still clenching her thighs together.

  “Oh, baby. You are so beautiful,” Annie proclaimed. “I love making you come. Let’s do it again.”

  Trudie huskily laughed. “I’m still pulsating, honey, let me enjoy it for a minute longer, okay?”

  “Anything you want, baby,” Annie said, rubbing her hand up Trudie’s abdomen and under her breast.

  “Oh, honey,” Trudie moaned.

  Just as Annie put her lips to Trudie’s hardening tit, her cellphone rang.

  “Shit!”

  “Don’t answer it,” Trudie implored.

  “I have to, baby, it might be the base calling.” Annie jumped from the bed and picked up her jeans. She fished the phone out and accepted the call.

  “Damn, you’ve got a magnificent ass,” Trudie said huskily, propped up on one elbow.

  Annie laughed as she spoke into the phone. “Hello? Yes, this is Annie Nichols in apartment 310. What? On fire? Shit!” Annie hung up and looked at Trudie. “My apartment is on fire.”

  “Oh, no!”

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can, I promise,” Annie said as she hurried to get dressed.

  Trudie jumped up and dressed also, and together they walked back into the kitchen.

  “Where’s Noella?” Trudie asked.

  “She just left,” Krystal replied.

  “Krystal, you’ll stay with Trudie until I get back, won’t you?”

  “I don’t need a babysitter, Annie,” Trudie complained.

  “Listen, we put a lot of stuff out there today that will piss the stalker off. I don’t want you left by yourself.”

  “I’ll stay, no problem,” Krystal volunteered.

  “Good, and thank you.” Annie grabbed Trudie by the shoulders and kissed her fast and hard. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “I hope everything’s okay,” Trudie said, holding the door open for Annie.

  Annie was already running down the stairwell when she shouted, “Me, too!”

  “Well, damn.” Trudie closed the door and fastened all the locks.

  “Why did Annie take off in such a hurry?” Krystal asked.

  “She got a call saying that her apartment was on fire,” Trudie said, walking back into the kitchen. “Want to have a soda with me?”

  “Sure,” Krystal replied. “That’s tough luck about Annie’s apartment.”

  “And incredibly bad timing,” Trudie pouted, opening the refrigerator door. As she reached for a cola, she felt something sting the back of her neck. “Ow. Something just bit me.” She rubbed her neck and then looked at her hand, but her hand was blurry. “I don’t feel so good,” she said woozily, and staggered back.

  “It’s all right, darling. I’ve got you,” Krystal said, throwing the syringe on the counter. “Let me help you over to the couch.”

  Darling? As if she were walking underwater, trying to catch a fish with her hand, the word finally penetrated Trudie’s drugged brain. Her eyes grew heavy, her tongue felt thick and her legs were going limp. “Why? I trusted you,” she muttered as she fell onto the couch and lost consciousness.

  “Because I love you,” Krystal replied after the fact. She pulled the rubber glove from her hand. “Sleep now, my darling. It will all be over with soon, and we’ll be together forever.”

  Lucy began growling and barking from her room, pawing at the door to get out.

  Krystal ignored her and retrieved her cellphone from her purse, then tapped in some numbers. “Yeah, it’s me again. The second package is ready for pickup.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Annie, Donny, and Annabelle stepped off the elevator together, and Annie rang Trudie’s doorbell. “Yeah, apparently it was a prank call. The landlord knew nothing about a fire,” Annie finished telling her story, as she rang the doorbell again. Suddenly she felt a cold wind blow through her soul, and she knew something was terribly wrong. She pounded on the door and it swung open. “Trudie!”

  The living room looked as if it had been ransacked, and as they went room to room, looking for Trudie, they saw that every room had been vandalized. Lucy was barking, demanding to be released and when Annie opened her door, she came barreling out and ran straight through the front door, into the foyer, where there was no way for her to exit. Annie grabbed the leash and put it on her. “Uncle Donny, stay with Mom and call 911!” she commanded as she opened the stairwell door and followed Lucy down the stairs.

  Lucy was on to a scent and even though she wasn’t a hunting dog, she was a loyal pet who knew her owner was in trouble. She led Annie through the back exit and onto the loading dock. She sniffed around and followed the scent to the asphalt in front of the dock, then she laid down and whimpered.

  “Damn it!” Annie shouted with every ounce of breath she had in her. She pulled the prepaid cellphone from her pocket and called Trudie, but got no answer. She tried again, and again, but there was no answer. She walked around, looking for any clue, anything that would bring Trudie back to her, but she found nothing. “Where is she, Lucy?” she asked feebly, crouching beside the dog and patting her shoulder. Lucy continued to whimper.

  ***

  “Just put her on the bed over there,” Krystal instructed, pointing to a twin bed wedged in a small, unembellished room behind her office.

  The brawny man looked at the masked woman and then at the bed sitting in the living room. If he hadn’t been so intimidated by her, he might have offered a threesome. He wasn’t particular about whether they were conscious or not. Instead, he counted the bills in the envelope she handed him, and started to leave.

  “And you’ll take care of the other matter?”

  “I’m on the way to her cabin next,” he replied.

  “Then don’t let me keep you,” Krystal said, nodding toward the door.

  He was more than happy to leave, and hurried out the door.

  Krystal had prepared for this since the day she killed Leigh. Trudie was supposed to have come home with her then, but her plans changed when Trudie broke her foot. She almost laughed when she took her shoe off to be examined. They had no clue just how strong her love for Trudie was. She’d surprised even herself when she was questioned by the police, as was everyone who knew Trudie, because she was able to mask the pain and kept it from showing on her face. And having a maid lead the police into the living room kept her from having to walk. After that she boarded a plane with the broken foot and flew to Memphis to have it operated on. She told Trudie that her mother had become suddenly ill and she had to stay with her for a while. It took a couple of surgeries, one of them cosmetic, to make her foot look natural again.

  Pulling her mask off and tossing it on the table, Krystal opened up a small steamer trunk at the foot of the bed and pulled out four sets of leather handcuffs, normally used for sexual
bondage. Not that Krystal had used them before, or even thought of them in that way. She picked up Trudie’s foot, slipped off her shoe, and handcuffed the foot to the bedrail. She did the same with Trudie’s other foot, and then both hands, apologizing as she did.

  “I don’t want to do this, my darling,” she said to Trudie as if she were awake, “but with your panic disorder, I don’t want you to hurt yourself when you wake up.” Krystal then covered Trudie with a blanket and kissed her on the forehead. On the nightstand beside the bed sat a bottle of Doxepin pills and a bottle of water and the refilled syringe of Secobarbital. “Sweet dreams, my darling.”

  Krystal had become contented with things the way they were. Her sexual needs for Trudie were fulfilled vicariously through the computer. Her need to have what she considered a normal connection with Trudie was satisfied every time they drank wine together, and her need to control and dominate Trudie, was more satisfying than everything else, although it would have been better, had Trudie known that she was being dominated. Soon, she will.

  ***

  “Oh, God. This is all my fault,” Annie lamented, her head in her hands.

  Lucy laid in front of her, whining, her head resting on her paws, but her eyes kept vigil on the strangers in her home.

  The police were everywhere, taking pictures, lifting prints, and talking to Trudie’s neighbors. They had already taken statements from Annie, Donny and Annabelle, and put out an all-points bulletin out on Trudie and Krystal, believing they were abducted together based on Krystal’s jacket on a chair.

  Annabelle put Bruno in the office and shut the door so she wouldn’t be frightened and dart out the front door. Then she sat down next to Annie on the couch. “It is not your fault, honey.”

  “I fell for the oldest trick in the book, Mom, of course it’s my fault.”

  Donny sat down in front of them. “Right now, the police are looking at it as a dual kidnapping since Krystal is missing too. They believe that they were injected using the syringe on the kitchen counter. Forensics will test the substance in the syringe, and check the blood on the needle for DNA. They’ve called in the FBI, who have jurisdiction over kidnapping cases, and they’ll be here any minute.”

  “Uncle Donny, what do I do now?” Annie asked somberly. “This is all my fault.”

  “Bullshit,” Donny chastised. “Now, you listen to me. You don’t have time for this. Trudie needs you now more than ever before. Get your ass out there and find her by any means possible.”

  Annie rubbed the moisture from her eyes and nodded. “I don’t think Noella is innocent in all this.”

  “You think she’s the one who kidnapped Trudie and Krystal?” Donny asked. “How?”

  “I don’t know how… yet.”

  Annabelle shook her head. “Honey, everyone knows that you don’t like Noella. Are you sure you’re not letting your feelings for her lead you the wrong way?”

  “I don’t have anything else to go by, Mom.”

  “Okay, say it is her,” Donny inserted. “How could she get Trudie down three flights of stairs?”

  Annie stood up and looked out the door, where the police were dusting for prints on the elevator doors. She turned back to Donny. “She was carried out using the elevator, which means she most likely was disguised or—”

  “Excuse me, I’m Special Agent Jacob Rogers with the Federal Bureau of Investigations. Which one of you is Annie Nichols?”

  “I am,” Annie said.

  “I understand you just got engaged to Ms. Youngblood this morning, is that correct?”

  “Yes, on live web stream. What are you doing to find Trudie?”

  “We’ve determined that she was most likely rendered unconscious, put in a wooden crate and wheeled out of here on the elevator.”

  “How did you figure that out so quickly?” Donny asked curiously.

  “There were splinters in the lower part of the elevator door. We figured the box scraped against it or the door closed on it while they were wheeling it in using a two-wheeled dolly. And we know it was a two-wheeler by the rubber scuff marks on the floor in the kitchen and the foyer.”

  “Damn, quick work, Agent,” Donny praised.

  “That part was easy, Mister…?”

  “Wilcox. Donny Wilcox. And this is Annabelle Nichols, Annie’s mother.”

  “I’m going to need statements from all three of you,” Agent Rogers stated.

  “Agent Rogers, what can I do to help?” Annie asked, pulling out her wallet and showing him her military identification. “I know that the longer it takes to find Trudie, the colder the trail grows.”

  “I’ve already put out an APB on a white van a witness saw parked at the loading dock in the time frame that Ms. Youngblood was kidnapped.” Rogers shook his head. “We’re not optimistic because there are thousands of white vans in Little Rock.”

  “And Krystal? She was the last person with Trudie when I left,” Annie said.

  “We searched her condo and found nothing out of the ordinary. If they did kidnap her, too, it was probably because she was in the way.”

  Agent Rogers sat down across from the others and Annie followed suit and sat down.

  “Now, talk to me,” he said, pulling out his pad and pen. “Tell me everything you know, and everything you think I should know.”

  Annie looked down a moment and scratched Lucy behind the ear. Then she looked at Agent Rogers again. “Trudie is an award-winning, accomplished author with a movie franchise based on her books. She has been stalked since her first book came out, and three years ago, her lover was stabbed to death by what they thought at the time was a crazed fan. After the stabbing, Trudie moved in here and hasn’t stepped foot out that door since then. She panics and faints if she tries to leave. Do you know what an agoraphobia suffers when they panic, Agent Rogers?”

  “No, I don’t guess I do,” he said.

  “Their heart beats so fast that they’re sure they’re having a heart attack. Their blood pressure shoots straight up and their lungs feel like they’re collapsing. It can actually cause the victim to have a heart attack if the pressure isn’t relieved. When Trudie wakes up, she is going to panic, and her anxiety level will triple when she realizes she has been kidnapped. I fear she may hurt herself or worse, have a heart attack. Also, if she was kidnapped by a fanatic, or even by Noella, who’s in love with her, she most likely will be tortured and raped.”

  “I’ve worked stalking cases before, Ms. Nichols, and I’m sorry to say, your assessment is correct,” Agent Rogers concluded.

  “I would like to help you find Trudie,” Annie stated.

  He shook his head. “That’s not possible, Ms. Nichols, for so many reasons, not the least of which, you are engaged to her.”

  “I’m also a cop, I can help,” Annie argued.

  “A military cop without jurisdiction, I’m afraid. The best thing you can do is stay here in case the kidnapper calls. We’ll put a trace on her cellphone, and—”

  “Her cellphone and computer were hacked by the kidnapper. I have a program that shows me when the stalker is on Trudie’s computer, but now that she has her, I doubt she’ll get online again.”

  Agent Rogers looked up from his notepad. “I’d like my techs to take a look at your program and inspect Ms. Youngblood’s computer and cellphone. They might be able to ping the IP address, or whatever it is that they do, and give us a lead.”

  “Sure, my laptop is in the office with Trudie’s PC. Uh, Agent Rogers, Trudie was unaware that she was being watched, and uh, so if the stalker recorded her when she thought she was alone… in her own home…”

  “I understand, Ms. Nichols. We will be as discrete as possible.”

  “Thank you,” Annie said appreciatively.

  Agent Rogers interviewed Donny and Annabelle also, and then walked back to the office when his techs arrived. They were back there for a while, then they unplugged everything and took it with them. Rogers left with them, but assured Annie that he would call if he found a
nything. But that wasn’t good enough for Annie. She couldn’t sit and wait, that wasn’t who she was. She pulled out her prepaid cellphone and called Trudie again. There was no answer.

  “Annie, you should have given that phone to the police,” Donny said.

  “I couldn’t, Uncle Donny. It’s my last connection to Trudie, and I can’t give that up.”

  “But they could ping it like Rogers said and find Trudie.”

  “I can ping it, too,” Annie replied. “Well, at least I’m pretty sure that Jeff can.”

  ***

  Four hours later, the wall slid to the side, and Krystal walked out, sliding the automatic wall back into place. She went into the kitchen and took out a can of soup from the pantry. Heating it up, she carried it back to the hidden room, and sat it on the small table. She looked at Trudie. “Come on, darling, it’s time to wake up.”

  Trudie recognized the voice, but she couldn’t get her eyelids to open up. Mumbling, she struggled against the remaining remnants of the drug. “Krystal?”

  “I’m right here, darling,” Krystal said, sitting on the side of the small bed.

  Trudie fluttered her eyelids open and waited for her vision to focus. Then she remembered. “Krystal, are you crazy? What are you doing?” Trudie gasped, her lungs growing tight, her heart beating faster as she looked around and realized she wasn’t at home. “Oh, God. No!”

  “You bitch, after all I’ve done for you and you lay there and call me crazy.”

  When she realized she couldn’t get up, Trudie began panicking and pulled against her restraints. Screaming, and cursing, and biting at Krystal’s hand, Trudie was soon in a full-fledged panic attack. She was no longer able to rationalize and thrashed about wildly, desperately seeking to break free and find a hiding place. “Let me go!” she screamed.

  “You cunt!” Krystal shouted, jumping up, surprised by the strength and forcefulness of Trudie’s hysterical reaction. She grabbed the syringe from the nightstand and jabbed it into Trudie’s arm.

  Trudie stopped thrashing as her body went limp. “No, please. I want to go home…” she muttered, and then slipped into unconsciousness again.